Watching “The Way”

While we were in Ithaca a few weeks ago, Herb and I saw the Emilio Estevez/Martin Sheen movie “The Way.” It got a pretty bad review in our paper (only one star from the Hearst Newspaper’s Mick LaSalle) but we didn’t hate it. Probably because it’s about hiking.

http://theway-themovie.com/media.php

In the movie, Martin Sheen’s character Tom travels to France to retrieve the body of his son Daniel (played in flashbacks by Estevez, way too old for the part of a wandering grad student), who died just a day into his pilgrimage on the El Camino de Santiago, which is a historical route stretching through northern Spain. Distances vary depending on your starting point, but according to the information I could find, in order to get the certificate of completion at the end, you have to have walked at least 100 km.

After picking up Daniel’s ashes, Tom decides to take all his son’s gear and walk the route himself, scattering the ashes as he goes.

I think the movie got a bad review because some of the acting is pretty terrible. The people Tom meets along The Way are caricatures and not very believable. Some of the monologues are particularly painful to watch and the scene in which Sheen drinks too much and gets arrested is ridiculous (funny, but ridiculous) because his previously quiet character suddenly descends not just into irritation with his companions (which would be understandable because they’re SO annoying) but into hyper-obnoxious ugly-American patriotism. Where did that come from?

That said, I enjoyed the basic concept of the movie, which is the transformative power of a journey. Tom starts out as a senior citizen opthamologist who likes to golf and becomes a fit walker toting a big backpack. Unfortunately, we don’t see much of the transformation. We do see him knock over the lamp in his hotel room the first time he puts on his pack. He almost takes a wrong turn on his way out of town and arrives at the next town after the pension has closed for the night. But despite his age and lack of fitness, he is soon trucking along the trail with little difficulty, only complaining once of sore feet.

The walking along the El Camino seems to be on dirt roads and through Spanish villages. There was some nice scenery, but little of the wilderness that we personally love to see. The movie’s emphasis was not really on nature, and more on Tom’s emotional journey.

That said, the film had one or two scenes that struck a particularly hikerly note — as when Tom unbuckles his heavy pack on a bridge and accidentally drops it over the side into a river. But most of time, it was just slightly off. When Tom jumps into the river to retrieve the bag, for instance, he never seems chilled by the dunking, despite being bundled up against the weather (if it wasn’t that cold, why was he zipped up in his Gore-tex?). And though we’re told Tom’s son is killed “during a storm,” we never actually learn HOW he died. Did he fall off a cliff? Get hit by lightening? I’m wondering if that information is on a cutting room floor somewhere.

Anyway, by the end of the movie, Tom gets his certificate of completion and is duly transformed.

If you’d like to see the movie on a big screen, you still can – it’s showing at Proctors in Schenectady this week (Jan. 16-19) – $5 a ticket! Quite a bargain. Click here for showtimes.

2 Responses

Sounds like an interesting movie, but I don’t know about that pack falling off. My father put the fear into me when I was a teenager and we were on the hitch-up Matildas at Avalanche Lake. “Unbuckle your pack belt, so that if you fall, you can slip it off. That pack would make you sink like a stone,” he would say. I figured my pack would definitely sink like a stone, but the guy in the movie could retrieve his? Hmmm. Oh well, it’s fiction, and it sounds like there are lots of good parts to the story!

Virginia, I tried to suspend disbelief. They weren’t backpacking so maybe his pack wasn’t THAT heavy. And maybe the water wasn’t THAT cold. It’s the little details that make a good story, though, isn’t it?

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